Ranking Every Settlement Location In Fallout 4 

hey folks, this is a re-upload, the backing soundtrack was flagged for copyright, which is wierd because I've used it several times before with no issues, and all of the checks after upload checked out, but that's youtube for you. it also gave me a chance to make a few minor corrections.

My only complaint of F4 for Settlement building is the inability to clean up areas. From a lore perspective, people want to clean their living space. Even in a future dystopian post apocalypse people will inherently desire to remove garbage from their homes! 🤦‍♂️

I would have LOVED if settlement mode allowed you to repair structures that you couldn’t scrap. Even if they looked a little mismatched or scruffy, it would have been amazing to restore roofs, walls, and flat floors!

i wish we have more prebuilt houses (the ones we can build) that didn't look like they could colapse at any time

I discovered that scraping mods bring problems of their own. Some places don’t have a collision mesh under the junk. Also scraping normally unscrapable structures doesn’t necessarily get rid of npc interaction markers. I once scraped the stilted building in hangman’s alley. I returned to find a settler five feet above the ground hammering a wall that no longer existed. 😅

I always ranked the Red Rocket gas station pretty high just because it's so cozy and it's like a 'no Preston's allowed' club where I can just chill and let the jukebox play.

An important tip i learned too late, and caused me to go back and re-do settlements: If you have to kill people or creatures to obtain the settlement, do NOT engage the workshop once you've cleared the settlement, until AFTER you have left the area, and stayed away for 2 in-game weeks. That will allow the dead creatures to disappear. This only works for the ones you've killed, not for dead bodies baked into the terrain. But it does work, as it was the only thing that eliminated things like the dead mole rats from Starlight Drive-In.

Theres something ridiculously funny about the pathing of the settlers to go around in circles and not interact with anything in the settlement but somehow manage to walk around the rooftops

It's kind of an interesting design choice to make everything half destroyed, but then to make it invulnerable.

I just wish more settlements could be established in the vanilla game. Many locations have great potential. Also the build ceiling in most settlements causes some eye twitch...

Watching this video made me realize exactly how dependent I am on mods. I like a lot of the bad settlements you listed and it's all because I have a mod that lets me scrap way more stuff.

I've had a permanent glitch where the Fogcrawler at Dalton Farm is invincible and cannot be killed no matter what I try (even console commands, it still respawns whenever I return). It just adds to the fun of the settlement as I've had to restrict access to the ground floor for settlers. They pass the time listening to the permanent sound of dozens of turrets opening up on the crawler while they go about their business.

You can get the lighthouse to shine if you wire up to the top

As an avid hangman's ally user; i see the error's in my way, but i refuse to change. Thank you

Hangman's Alley is one of my most frequently used settlements because of its location. My main home is either Red Rocket or Sanctuary Hills but they're miles away from everything else

I always build the castle. I think it works nicely trying to cram everything in the middle and growing crops on top

You can also unlock Warwick immediately by going to the atom cats and doing the chores they have for you.

The mechanist’s layer has one purpose, it’s a really good settlement to make your “logistics hub” as it’s literally a settlement that you can just forget about and not have to walk in on only to find the place crowded by settlers assigned to resource transportation. If you really want to, you can also decorate the place to make it feel like a professional logistics hub and not like just a place to dump your settlers assigned to logistics.

I’ve found that there’s functionality 3 types of settlements that exist in the game, and this has really colored my experience in both how I build and how favorable I am to certain places since what might be bad at one thing is perfect for another. The big three types are, safe house, settlement, and NPC home. Also should be stated I play in almost entirely in survival mode so take what with a grain of salt since I am playing a different game to the standard play through. For safe houses you have things like Hangman’s Alley, Jamaica Plains, and RedRocket. They are more designed to be rest stops for refilling needed resources, and dumping inventory as well as a safe and sanitary place to save. They are also never supposed to support more than say 1-2 people at any given time since the place is really only suppose to support the player with what they need, and not sustain a village. For these places it’s almost more important where they are than what they have. This is crucial for the vast majority of the game until you get to later stages where you have enough vertabirds grenades to consistently take you places. This is why hangman’s alley is so beloved. It is in the perfect location with the only problem being the vertabird drop point being on a random encounter. Also a settlement like Summerville Place works really well in this light since it’s the perfect rest stop before the glowing sea. Settlements are exactly that. Places like Sanctuary, the Slog, and Starlight Drive In where they are just a place for a village. They are exactly what people imagine when talking about settlement building so I don’t need to say anything else. Finally we have NPC homes. Places like Finch Farm, Grey Garden, and Abernathy Farm. Though these can be perfect examples of the above mentioned types. I find they’re main point of existence is to be the quest they have with just the reward being that you get a settlement, and sometimes a settlement with a quirk like grey garden. Not much to say, but I personally try to leave them more or less as intended, and just let them be what they were. There’s no reason in my mind to build here since these aren’t really my places.

Just to add flavor. The battle of Bunker Hill was fought from Breeds Hill. The British from boston wanted Bunker Hill for high ground placement of armies and artillery. The patriots found out and loaded Breeds Hill with militiamen. The men on Breeds Hill were able to hold the British at bay till their ammo ran dry. The British, while technically winning by taking the hills after patriots could no longer fight, actually lost about 4 times as many men as the patriots did.

The problem with this game Settlement is that not very far away from most Settlements are functioning save defencable buildings

I spent far too much time building vault 88 for almost no pay out. That said, the solution I implemented for attacks was very simple for the investment it takes. I used concrete walls and windows to create a box trap at both alt entrances, and trail markers to help myself navigate. Now, I don't get lost and I know were every enemy is - clean up is a breeze.

My hatred of murkwater stems from a glitch causing the queen to respawn. Nothing like having to repair most of the water/food/defense from that

Kingsport Lighthouse is my favorite. I love seeing the ocean and what there is that is unscrappable can be easily incorporated into a build. As for building, because I'm on a PC, I used to use expanded settlement budget mods and Scrap Everything but I've found these add way too many problems in the long run. Now I the defaults for settlements and try to work with whatever is there. I find it actually forces me to be way more creative with my builds and my game is much more stable.

Finch farm has a small pool of water you can put a water purifier in near the support pillar at 29:30.

My favorite thing about most of the useless settlements is that you can just steal all recourses and bring them to your main settlement

I really enjoy the castle partially because of the free defenses you can get. All you have to do is wait a few days, complete the quest (that gives you some pretty cool armor imo) and boom you've got some mines and laser turrets. I'm not a huge settlement builder but having the castle come with defenses like that makes it feel like an actual castle. Plus the free water it comes with, and the ease of building crops, it's an awesome package that makes it my favorite settlement. The worst thing in my opinion is the guy with the radio blabbering on. It is kinda weird to see what's supposed to be a big militia in just rags and leather hats, though. I prefer downloading a mod that makes the minutemen more like a serious militia and less like a joke, with things like combat/power armor (depending on your level) and better guns

That had to be a frustrating re-edit & upload 😵‍💫

There is a mod on console that can scrap dead bodies. If I remember correctly, it is called Scrap Everything. I also believe it can scrap the unscrapable houses in many places.

In all fairness to outpost zimonja, it's not as hard to take it as you're making it out to be. There's a bridge just above that you can shoot from and can be used to soak up the mini nukes if you step back at the right time! I usually add a few crops and a water pump and pretend that it's a little safehouse for railroad agents ❤

Okay, Hangmans ally is best taken by dropping down from the adjacent roofs, dont unlock the doors at all and you keep it so much more secure, one guard will take out most enemies because they wont have a path to move, adding turrets to the adjacent fire escapes and roofs will help, you can get in from the roof on the east side from the ally and get out by jumping the guard tower.

I loved The Castle. I immediately repaired the wall when I arrived, shortly after had the first difficult raid on it, and from there I knew it would be my favorite settlement. I put a powered door on one side, but the little hallway entry point I left unblocked, because being the only entrance to the settlement, that became my choke point for turrets. For me, it was like Starlight, but with a pre-existing structure that looked like about as good as I could hope to make of a building on the land anyway. I loved the idea of Starlight. I wanted to build a tribute to Sol Tower from one of my favorite retro RPGs that, accurate to said title, would be essentially the entire settlement, but after clearing everything for parts and opting to leave it without a recruitment beacon until I had made the first couple floors of the structure, I just...never ended up building on it. Every time I would go to it I would see it and go "Ah, this is gonna be an awesome primary settlement eventually." and...that was it. Abernathy Farm I honestly dismissed as just another farm, but after watching your top settlements video I was tempted to go back a little. I never ended up doing so though, because it ended up being my most raided settlement by a very wide margin. The fact that it's run by Chuck Norris couldn't save it from me getting too frustrated by the fact that whether it was from misc. raids or Radio Freedom calls, its number got called roughly 1 in every 3 times I had to defend a settlement, even though it had next to no upgrades apart from having enough turrets that it should've never had any issues.

You CAN access water for a purifier at Finch Farm. Part of the river to the Northeast under the bridge is inside the settlement boundary. Just FYI. 😉

...there's an island i couldve built on?

Despite the downsides, I still think Hangman's alley should be near the top of this list because it is probably hands down the most important settlement in survival mode. Its location alone makes it so valuable as a settlement.

I am very impressed with your improvement of quality. You’re quality has gotten so good over a short period of time! Props to you

I think a lot of these settlements are meant as stopping off points in survival mode

I like Coastal Cottage, it’s definitely not great… I like making a large concrete domicile on the cliff.

Great video! I love Starlight Drive In too. I just wish Bedford Station was another settlement too because I like that area of the map.

I'm currently redoing sanctuary and the red rocket, which by using certain mods, can be fused into one giant town 😊 personally, my fav settlement is probably Abernaty farm, and least fav would be Jamaican plain. JP is just too much wasted potential. (seriously, what were they thinking in the studio)

5:25 coastal cottage is actually quite fun to build a small bunker/hideout in

Fallout 4 is easily my favourite game and i have played a lot in my lifetime. I don't know what it is about the game, its very immersive and theres so many different companions and people you meet. Its the one game that makes me want to go back and play through again.

Some of my favorite videos. You say they needed some improvement but I watched them a few times each.

I really enjoyed this video and I appreciate your perspective a lot. I’ve been playing Fallout 4 for years but only just recently got into settlement building and it’s been a ton of fun. Definitely going to prioritize your list of top settlements though! (also thank you so much for warning me about the triangle of death; that could have been a huge problem for me haha)

Hangman's Alley is probably the best settlement for a survival playthrough.

I keep hearing about a next-gen version of FO4. I hope they take a good look at the pre-combines and the scrapping issues. Great video.

This is my first ever video from you AND settlement rating in fallout. Earned a new sub lol

HEY MAN!, Glad i found you , I just started playing FO4 again after 6yrs (easily) , & I HONESTLY really do Appreciate your videos, your videos have made it fun & i realized i was building to much to quickly spreading myself thin on Build Materials, but a bunch of your other videos have helped me remember locations to farm build materials & items to Farm for caps. Enjoying the content Keep up the great work!

I love Starlight. Its where I build my food factory, its my trading hub and where I have a lot of provisioners meet at. Murkwater is where I ship the Longs to if they annoy me too much and if I play evil in Nuka World, where I'll ship Preston to.

what a great channel, a true hidden gem of YT. I will now spend the next week (hopefully you have many videos already) watching all your stuff. Thank you for this

Great video. I thoroughly enjoyed it & learned quite a bit. Appreciate the attention to detail in everything.

One thing I tend to do with the red rocket truck stop near sanctuary is build ground water purifiers in the back then build an elevated bunk house on top of them taking the actual red rocket for myself. Then I tend to build shops on the right side looking north, and last I use the remaining sides of the settlement to plant plenty of crops for adhesive production and more.

It's a good list and I agree with it based on the no mod or console commands premiss. You did a great job with it. Me, I cannot...cannot play this game without Scrap That Settlement. I got it initially for the trash because all the funk laying around made no sense to me and after awhile I was pretty certain my brain would explode. Then I got STS and it just got good to me. I don't find the repetition of scrapping tedious tho. I find it relaxing. And things are better after I'm done. Not being able to scrap many things in settlements makes zero sense. Folks would be tearing those crappy buildings down and picking up trash and dead shrubs and such to rebuild a home. STS is the only scrapping mod I will use though as I know it wont break anything.

I would argue that Outpost Zimonja is at least workable. Very mid, and definitely not the worst tier outside of settlements that physically can't function as settlements because they lack important things like ability to have food, water, or even call settlers there in the first place. Sure, God's Staircase can be annoying if you don't want to work around it, it is out of the way, provisioner pathing is weird, and there's an enemy spawn point smack dab in the center of the settlement, but it's definitely workable. There are ways to get around all these things. I've had 22 settlers, surplus of food and water, max happiness, all stores, all crafting stations, plus extra amenities. It's the settlement I finally got the benevolent leader trophy on, and it's my favourite place to build despite my recognition that it's not top tier. Way easier to work with than Hangman's Alley, I don't care if it's smack in the center of the Commonwealth right next to Diamond City making it a viable PLAYER BASE in survival mode, but for a section of land to build a settlement out of? Outpost Zimonja is one hundred percent better than Hangman's Alley in every way except for being in a convenient location. No stores nearby? You can just build stores and the caravan trading post in your settlement and the stores just come to you! I do also enjoy building at Croup Manor, but fun fact with the settler pathing: all my settlers end up spawning in the water off the cliff side at the back side of the Manor, and they can't path their way back up and you can't build stairs for them to build the path back up. I do love Nordhagen Beach, too, but I have issues in places where kids are pre existing settlers (like Somerville Place). If you delete what their job is, you cannot reassign them to literally anything and then your happiness tanks because they're unemployed. On the other hand, I absolutely despite building at Abernathy Farm, Finch Farm, Warwick Homestead, and Spectacle Island. The first three are because the pre existing structures at these places don't count as being roofed, so the unscrappable beds that they always default to even if you reassign them aren't counted as sheltered and they always find a way back to them even if you block the entire area off, so getting settler happiness to max is basically impossible. Warwick Homestead also suffers from settlers just spawning in the vats of water and being unable to get out. Really annoying when a radiant quest sends you there and you can't talk to the settler who wants to give you the quest because they're stuck swimming. I don't like Spectacle Island because it's too big. There's TOO much space to work with, it's an island that's not easy to get to (unlock Longfellow's Cabin) so not very practical for a settlement in a world where the only way to get to it is to swim, and settlers are hard to track down even with the bell. My absolute least favourite settlement to build at, though, is Covenant. It's basically impossible to build there. Not anything nice, at least. And good luck if you got it through the non bloodshed way because if it gets picked for a Minuteman radiant quest, Jacob Orden will bug out and just never give you the next step in the quest they need help for. Also, you mentioned having an issue getting Warwick Homestead as a settlement without doing the Institute quests, that's Somerville Place for me. It took me eight years to finally have a save file where I was sent to help Somerville Place with something. That's right, this year marks the year I started one of many new playthroughs and the dice rolled to give me Somerville Place! Not really worth it, but I wanted all the settlements in my main file and was unable to get them because Preston and Radio Freedom stopped giving me radiant quests to help settlements and Somerville Place just never asked for help.

Hey this video was super helpful. I have over 1000 hours in the game and havent done much building. But in recent times ive noticed starlight drive in has 2 spawn locations for enemies. One is by the crashed train and the other is by the ceiling ramp of the dinner projector building. Also i really hope when the ps5 fallout 4 comes out we get more stuff like we did for skyrim. Keep up the great content!

I always loved turning Home Plate into my personal museum. I'd have most of my previous clothing sets, primary/secondary weapons, my bobbleheads, certain items like a nuke warhead a fusion core etc etc in little display cases. I'd build up a nice looking bedroom and really go HAM decorating the place. My settlements I'd just stick to developing for settlers, never really spending time building a player home there. Its a fun way to play. Thinking about it actually gives me the itch to go back and play Fallout 4 again!

Um if a settlement doesn't have access to water, put down a farm plot and put one or two of those mechanical water pumps down on top of them. The tops of the plots count as dirt. You can put them anywhere you can put a plot down.

32:30 I kinda love close together settlements. wish there were more because of that

I was in the middle of the original video when it got re-uploaded. I was so confused lmao. Amazing content, keep it up

The one thing I really like about Jamaica Plain is how close its buildable area is to Hyde Park. Scutter's raiders are within reach of a scoped weapon from the roofs; and the area between the two is more or less flat and devoid of cover which lets turrets do particularly good work when the raiders aggro toward you. Situational, and not all that mechanically powerful in practice; but it's fun to have the opportunity for settlement defenses to actually do work in the world for you. Greygarden has a bit of that as well; the very edge of its buildable area has a solid overlook of a road that sometimes gets raider patrols.

I was just looking for this. I knew I saw it earlier.

There's a third power armor chassis near the National Guard Training Yard, just make a beeline for the Satellite Array and you'll come across some APCs and a trailer truck, typically guarded by a Mister Handy and sometimes and an Assaultron, fighting some random scavs or creatures. The power armor will be in the truck and have random pieces like the one locked in the workshop of the armory instead of a full set like the one locked behind an Expert lockpick/hack

Hi. I've watched a few vids and I've subbed today as you make really great, informative and entertaining content. Excellent. Thank you.

This was a great video! Now I feel like I need to look into your build guides!

The trader stalls at covenant actually CAN be assigned to settlers if you have the vault-Tec DLC! Using the vault-tec management terminal you can assign unemployed settlers to them. I’m not sure what tier they become when you assign them though

The Warwick settlement gets opened through a quest from the Atom Cats.

Overall this is a very helpful commentary and assessment of the available settlement build sites, with some good pros and cons brought to light. Thank you for the video and for you thoughts, ideas and opinions on this portion of the game. Subbed.

Starlight is my favorite by far. I agree with most ratings except Finch Farm. Like Greygarden, you can build up on that raised highway. I’ve made some nice fortresses on that ridge. You can snipe The Forged in the foundry and Gunners in the junkyard. It’s near northeast coast of map so it’s a good springboard for that part of the map.

Im confused, you were critical of a lot of settlements that were "player home esc" but then praised red rocket for just that?

The one point Coastal Cottage has in its favor, same as Hangman's Alley, is that you can put artillery there and summon Minuteman reinforcements. It's A Base, and that is all. Otherwise, I agree that they're the Worst of the Worst.

Sunday morning, no plans for today..just a cup of coffee and this video. thanks!!!

I have a sort of sandbox type of save where I experiment with ideas and builds for certain settlements. My two favorites I've made so far are outpost zimonja which I turned into a Boston minuteman radio station where traders and really anyone can travel to and make a request for a radio broadcast by way of a script they write. They'll be greeted with a sort of bunkhouse/restaurant/bar to just hang out at after making such a dangerous journey all the way up there. There's also a farm for the restaurant and some water pumps that are out of the way of everything so they don't cause any noise issues for patrons. My second favorite is my beloved Starlight City. I made it look more recently established with junk fences surrounding the city as well as the tall guard posts slyly engraved into the walls for certain high risk areas like the cliff side overlooking the city and the main gate where people are vetted to be let in or turned away. I used a glitch I think with a rug and concrete pillar to move the industrial water pumps away from the main city but they still produce water. I used the area behind the projector wall for farming and have it built like a scrappy greenhouse where they supply the city with food. the little room you can go into is where the greenhouse extends out of and it's used by the gardeners as a secret drug crafting den where the city gets most of its funding. The lore is the reason the city is so prosperous is because the founder's grandson who is a coward made a deal with some of the raider clans nearby and agreed to sell them as much drugs as they could afford so long as they leave the city alone. Of course being a bunch of strung out junkies they agreed and they continued to grow due to large influxes of money and resources being delivered to them suspiciously in a very safe manner but no one has looked into it cause there's no raiders attack and everyone is well fed and has a secure roof over their head. To end it off the city has 3 areas with their own purposes. Facing the main building, off to the left and wrapping around to the back of the building, there's a pseudo-strip mall with dedicated stores for clothes hand tailored by a woman and her son who run the store together, a general trading store that's used as more of a pawn shop ran by a sleazy doofus who's hoping to one day travel the whole U.S. to sell goods as a wandering merchant (his shop is mostly where people just trade some valuables for a few extra caps or a couple rolls of duct tape before heading back out on the road), and a weapons shop that an elderly blacksmith runs with his adopted son he'd found around 12 years before settling in Starlight City it's a long story we can move on. The smith is in the far back corner facing inward toward the projector wall, the pawn shop is a little further down the path facing into the city with a bright neon sign labeled "Patrick's Pawns" it's not a very creative name and his name isn't even Patrick he just found the sign somewhere. And right next to his place is the clothing store with a second story where the woman and her son sleep. They're a bit on the poor side and don't have much stuff besides their sewing equipment and a family heirloom (I've yet to decide what I want it to be) that they keep on display. On the opposite side of the city is the residential area where the houses are supported by the junk walls. Not much to talk about with the houses tho just the usual long house, small house, two story, and an apartment complex that's a 4x3 and 3 stories tall that can house up to 24 residents but no less than 12 with everyone getting a 1x2 apartment that's surprisingly spacious if you lay it out correctly. And finally the most recent thing I've been working on is a 3 story building built up against the projector wall that has a restaurant/bar on the ground floor, a front patio for outside eating, a roughly put together inn for temporary residents, and the top floor where there's a lounge area and a balcony over looking the city. That's as far as I've gotten with starlight city but I've been feeling inspired to continue working on it.

I recently found out that attackers (like the Rust Devils) could take weapons out of the workshop and use them, that’s why you should probably put defenses in your player homes

I could think of a use for the worst of the worst, just a small outpost to rest and resupply, a small elevated house for one or two settlers. Nothing is entirely useless, just gotta figure out how to make use of what you got.

I'm so happy there's actually settlement building content on YT. I always hear about how people hate settlements, it's really nice to get content I can relate to lol

My personal favorites include Zimonja, Jamaica Plains, Tenpines and Taffington. I play on PC and usually modded, so it makes these settlements MUCH more enjoyable and reusable. One of my usual "first big goals" is to restore the house at Tenpines. It's really fun if/when you allow yourself to be creative. JP is also wonderful and fun place for restoration project. Sure, you have no place for large population but it can easily support small trading post.

This is not settlement .This Is A Settlement Look why have Crops....... That's .A. crop

What’s wrong with Covenant again? I just remember lots of talk about lemonade

Thanks for this video! I was hoping for something like this after watching the worst and best videos.

Great video as always!! Love this channel!

Just an FYI, there are several spots on the floor of The Mechanist's Lair that you can put water pumps into. The debris piles that clutter the floor can support a hand pump for 3 water per. Yeah, you do lose the chance to place them if you did the logical thing and clean the place up. Lost the chance myself on one save, and after that I just always placed my pumps first, THEN I started scrapping. Some things can be group-selected out of their natural environment as well. I personally like to place a large water purifier for 40 water at Finch Farm. You can stick it near the gunners, but then group-select it, and place it elsewhere after the initial placement requirements have been met. Most of the time I just stick it right behind the Finch's house or in that unscrappable pile next to the house. You can do that trick with many things. I also like to plant razorgrain at Starlight Drive-in, then I will group-select 2-3 of them, and place them around the water pool with a few in the middle. Presto now I have my own "Rice Paddy"!!!! They still work as a valid crop too. I also like to place a few melons, gourds, and perhaps a mutfruit or 3 to add some water plants. They look really pretty as decorative lilypads/flowers.

The triangle of death is not the player's fault. It is the developer's fault. They shouldn't have placed the three settlements so close together. While players do bypass the restrictions that Bethesda placed on settlement building in order to keep performance more acceptable, I find that these restrictions are too heavy. I can't enjoy building settlements without bypassing some of those restrictions. Unfortunately, that means I have to choose which of those three settlements I want to place attention on rather than letting all three flourish simultaneously. This could have been avoided with some alternative level design (not making Red Rocket a settlement, choosing another Red Rocket, or moving Red Rocket; and moving Abernathy Farm farther away).

Hangman's alley is a great spot for a trader settlement or hub build. Just plan to only keep a handful of settlers there. I treat it as a stopping point/hub for trade going to diamond city. Once connected via trade routes it also makes easier to trade in bulk with DC and isn't too far from Good Neighbor either

Just got back into FO4 on PS4 recently and was looking at my old bases. I built a massive tower base in outpost Zimonja years ago. Had to flaten it out using foundations and half walls to cover up some of the immortal buildings. Used the walkway to hide generators. Had at least 8 floors with diifferent themes/purposes. Got about 18-20 settlers living there. Used pre walled settlements for protection without using up the build limit and put my turrets high enough that they wipe stuff out before it's a problem. Put a few balconies/holes in for jetpacking in and out. It went from being the worst to my best base after that. Main mods used were for the wall and clutter. Should be able to make a good base on vanilla too if you have workshop dlc.

Lets be honest. Fallout 4 was an unfinished game that got released as a finished product on the surface but really was not a finished product and it shows. It really really shows. The building feature is so broken and incomplete in the vanilla game.

You should rate settlements based on their ability to be player homes.

I do enjoy building in Hangman Alley personally, and when I do, I intentionally leave the two other doors sealed, so enemies that want in get funnelled through concentrated defenses.

21:05 - was listening to this while driving. The way you said the word "Wharf" so many times clued me in to what you were doing. Well... that AND I've been watching DS9.

Good video, in regards to totally vanilla playthroughs, but there is one error: In Covenant, while you can't assign settlers to Penny's store (albeit you can glitch a general merchant store counter into it via rug or pillar glitching, it is possible to assign someone to Dr. Patricia's clinic if you have the Vault-Tec Workshop add-on & have the Vault-Tec Settlement Management terminal unlocked (It may be unlocked by default if you have the expansion/whatever they call the version that has all the DLC bundled with it, but I don't remember, due to it being so long since I unlocked all the Vault-Tec stuff in this playthrough): All you need to do is build & power the Vault-Tec Personnel Management terminal then use its "Employment Overview" menu to assign a settler as a medic, and they'll go to Patricia's spot & act as a medic. Unfortunately you can't do that for Penny's shop (for some reason), but I did want to point out that there is one store you can reassign, even if it requires other means than ordinary.... Also, you can get rid of the permanent bodies via console commands on PC if worse comes to worst (I did the ones I couldn't move that way & just dumped the rest in the bushes along the river). Finally in regards to Covenant, it does have one redeeming feature even in vanilla for Minutemen players: You can put an artillery piece in the middle to help increase your overall artillery coverage. Re: Longfellow's Cabin: Another issue with it is that, while you can build on the entire island, if you build outside the area surrounded by the Fog Condensers, stores will be horribly bugged (settlers will man them, but you can't actually buy anything from them or otherwise interact with them) and for some reason, any MG turrets placed outside said fog condenser radius will only be Mk 1, instead of, you know, Mk 7 like any MG turrets on the freaking island should be! This bug is also true of every other vanilla Far Harbor settlement, but since the fog condensors are usually close to the settlement boundaries on those, it's not as obvious as it is in Longfellow's Cabin... Re: Finch Farm: There is a bit of water in one of the corners of the settlement you can fit exactly *one* industrial water purifier in. Re: Starlight Drive-in: There are actually 3 attack spawn points, but two of them are pretty high up on the hill above the settlement, which means that sometimes the attackers get side-tracked and even wiped out by the bloodbugs that randomly spawn in the same area before even reaching the settlement. One is more or less directly above the shed where the workshop is and the other is above & to the right (if you're facing the hill) of the projector house/concession stand. I also find it to be a good settlement, even if I have been somewhat neglecting it this playthrough due to a combination of lack of inspiration for what to build there combined with either getting inspiration to work on other settlements or said other settlements taking a higher priority for completion for other reasons (e.g. wanting to finish up the Castle build for my main base before completing other settlements or wanting to get certain settlements done before playing certain quests for background for my Rise of the Minutemen videos like the case with the Boston Airport). I do agree that it is a prime spot of a trade hub, and it serves as such for the Northwest Region, much like how Jamaica Plain is the hub for the Southeast region, with similar amounts of provisioner routes meeting up at both. Also wanted to add that, while I have a series of mods that fix most of the problems with the other settlements on the bottom of the list (and even make the Boston Airport into a viable settlement), I *STILL* only use the Mechanist's Lair as a Safehouse/Storage Facility/Provisioner Waystation... That ought to tell you something about how lousy of a "settlement" location that place is!

Loved this video, inspired me to do another Brotherhood/Minutemen settlement playthrough! Edit: one of the things that always annoyed me is that i like to have a central hub that connects all the settlements with trade routes; I've just realized that pumping robots out of the mechanist lair to link everything up might be a great way to avoid the brahmin gridlock that messed up Sanctuary for me in my early playthroughs.

i like hangman's ally as a mini base. a quick place to duck into away from enemies. i actually send danse there after his quest because it's a cool place to lay low. i only wish i knew how to build upwards and we could build inside the buildings too, it would definitely add to the space of it and make for an interesting area

Hangman's Alley actually has a lot of vertical building potential. I made a couple stairways and made a two or three story building (well, you have to move the stairs obviously) and I was able to make plenty enough sleeping bags for this crammed-out population.

Nice videos mate. Keep up the good work!

I love the slog- I'm happy to see that it's so high on the list.

Coastal cottage and Summerville place are good for artillery batteries and dumping places for stuff when you are travelling

Thank you for this helpful and informative video

Hangman would be AMAZING if some of the apartments were open to use as building areas. I used a mod that opened one of the buildings and connected it to another street (making it more accessible) and it made the settlement one of my best. A shame Bethesda couldn’t do it

I KNEW the drive in cinema would be #1 its great! i have recently begun my adventures into the world of structuring builds, although Sanctuary is kinda my more important one atm. BUT when i begun building at the drive in i felt a bit of excitement. But even more excitement was you mentioning the pond in the middle is ideal for a water purifier because guess what?? Thats exactly what i did after i cleared all the junk from in and around it. Great video!!!

I remember staying up half the night building a massive warehouse in Starlight Drive-In. And half the next night installing a huge Rube Goldberg machine using the Contraptions Workshop.

Awesome video as always. My personal favorite is vault 88.